You’ve heard this story before: a guy makes a political statement on social media, and the people who disagree are so incensed that they try to get him fired from his job over it. It starts with doxing (broadcasting his personal information online) and ends with calls to his employer. Maybe he gets fired, maybe he doesn’t. A cautionary tale for the Internet Age. By now it’s acquired the patina of urban legend: Watch what you say or they’ll dox you. It happens, you know.

It does happen. It happened to my friend R.M. Huffman. I can’t say enough good things about Dr. Huffman. He’s a practicing anesthesiologist, a skilled writer, an illustrator, a husband, and the father of small children. In addition to writing the Sweet Tooth horror-comedy series, he’s also written the fantasy novels Leviathan and Fallen, was kind enough to write the foreword to Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice, and wrote the short story Never Again for the Appalling Stories 2 anthology. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll remind readers that I’m the managing editor of the Appalling Stories series.)

He’s also a Christian conservative, and he’s on Twitter. Not long after the 2019 State of the Union Address, while the abortion debate was still fresh in everyone’s minds thanks to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam publicly approving of the murder of newborn infants and New York State permitting the abortion of an infant up to the day of delivery, Huffman posted this:

We could make the claim that it’s a reasonable statement: after all, sex makes babies, generally. But to a certain segment of the population, it’s inflammatory. In a brief interview, I asked Huffman why he posted the tweet and tagged the Democrat politicians:

The political milieu at the moment still involved fallout from Governors Cuomo and Northam publicly supporting legal infanticide, which is exactly what “late-term abortion” actually is. The abortion question is entirely dependent on axioms: is a fetus a living, autonomous human, or is it simply tissue in a woman’s body? That being so, I thought that tweeting out the obvious truism that sexual intercourse can lead to pregnancy, albeit with a rhetorical flourish intended to catch people’s attention, and tagging some women whose voices would resonate with the target cohort might lead to a few pre-pregnancy decisions that would obviate the need to consider abortion whatsoever. In other words, I wanted girls to be reminded that “pro-choice” ought to mean “I can choose whether or not to have sex, and if I’m not also ready to carry a child, my choice needs to be ‘no.'” That’s all.

The tweet occasioned the expected anger and invective, which ran the gamut from standard name-calling to informing him, a father of four, that he’ll never get laid. Par for the course, and nothing to get exercised about. All you have to do is flip a switch and you’ll never see it. And if you do see it, who cares? The world’s full of angry people who say things on the internet that they’d never dare utter outside of it.

Not long after the tweet got a lot of heat from progressive Twitter, someone with the pseudonym Jimbob bigguns (sic), without buying or reading Huffman’s novel Fallen, gave it a one-star review on Amazon. (You’ll note that Jimbob’s done this to another conservative author, too.) It happens. It’s nasty, but it happens. You can’t keep people from doing that, and Amazon’s too busy to look at every single review for accuracy or political bias. Just about every conservative author’s dealt with that kind of thing. It’s what progressives on social media do to writers.

Then things got really ugly. At the time, his Twitter bio mentioned that he’s a practicing anesthesiologist.

Not satisfied with simply linking to Huffman’s personal information, she added this statement: “It’d be funny if his ratings blew up with a sh*t ton of 1 *’s from his negative tweets.” Now Dr. Kat is coyly suggesting that her followers try to destroy his professional rating over words he posted on the internet. (Funny how she won’t spell out the word “shit,” but doesn’t scruple to attack him professionally.) They’re not his patients. They’ve never interacted with him on a professional level. Dr. Kat has never worked with him. And yet they’re trying to affect how he makes a living. This is not just malicious, but fraudulent.

So it’s bad, but not terribly damaging. Do most people check those ratings before allowing Huffman to treat them? Hard to tell. But this is where Dr. Kat’s buddies signal their intent to go for the real prize: getting him canned. The Launch Journals says, “Would be kinda great if this hill he’s choosing to die on also kills his current employment situation.” And Jaynie Campbell is only too happy to oblige by posting a list of Huffman’s hospital privileges and telling people to report him to the Texas Board of Medicine. Because of what he said on Twitter. Not because of his professional conduct as a physician. Not because of how he practices medicine. But because he said something she didn’t like.

When Jaynie Campbell gets called out for posting this information with the intent to get him fired, her response is, “It’s all PUBLIC information.” As though posting it on Twitter and encouraging people to destroy his career is perfectly reasonable because his information is readily available.

Last Stand in Oregon couldn’t wait to tell the world that he’d reported Dr. Huffman for professional misconduct over words on the internet. Huffman never treated him.

This encouragement to contact Huffman’s employers continued for some time, including suggestions that Huffman might rape an unconscious patient. Even though he never said anything of the kind. Even though none of them have seen him in a professional capacity.

Me: When did you first learn that people actually did contact your employer?

Huffman: As soon as I saw the first tweet that contained (inaccurate) hospital names and contact information, I knew they would. Anonymous leftist fascists aren’t bluffing; they really do want to ruin your life. To answer the question, though: the day after, when the CEO of an anesthesia group that mine occasionally associates with called me and told me that several hospitals had been asking him about the tweet. That’s when, as a personal favor to him and at his request, I deleted it.

What’s remarkable about the mindset of the people trying to put Huffman out of work over his politics is that they feel perfectly justified in doing so. Donna Jergentz, exulting in her cohorts’ efforts, said, “It’s just starting. I’ve heard of people doing stupid things online – throwing a medical career away for Politics? What a fool.” Nobody threw anything away. A mob is comprised of individuals, and individuals perform individual actions, including the attempt to destroy a man’s medical career. Over his Politics (sic).

Tina Desiree Berg simply saw the attempt to put Huffman out of work as the consequence of his problematic opinions. If you have the wrong thoughts and have the temerity to express those wrong thoughts, you shouldn’t be able to make a living.

The best justification for all of this came from A Cranky Yankee, whose magnum opus must be read to be believed:

Me: How has this affected your career?

Huffman: It hasn’t, because I scrubbed my Twitter feed entirely. A hospital administration that was a recipient of the doxxed information looked at my timeline and decided that my Christian, conservative beliefs about human sexuality were discriminatory to the “LGBTQ community” and thus violated hospital bylaws. I was given the choice to delete my account or face disciplinary action. Reluctantly, and with much counsel, I simply deleted my Twitter history instead of fighting a battle that I’d win, but would still hurt me professionally. My wife didn’t like me spending time on there anyway.

You’ll notice that the majority of the people trying to get Huffman fired use anonymous accounts. It’s a good strategy, because it shields them from similar attack. The anonymity makes them feel safe to say and do anything they want. Those few who have gainful employment and, presumably, something to lose, are protecting themselves with that anonymity.

The difference between social media and a firearm is that you don’t need a background check to use social media. Like a firearm, it’s a tool. It’s often very destructive in the wrong hands, and most of the time you only hear about how terrible it can be after someone’s been hurt by it. But it’s not intrinsically evil. Few things are. You just have to use it properly:

Never talk about politics on social media, even with people you agree with.

You’ve ignored 1., or you’re planning to. Fine. Never use your real name, use your real photo, or make references to your family while you’re on social media.

Choose an anonymous handle, one that you haven’t used elsewhere. Anonymity is key.

Don’t disclose any personal information on social media.

Don’t take anything other people say on social media seriously.

Don’t take what you say on social media seriously.

Use social media for 5 minutes a day, at most. This is not a joke.

Like it or not, there are many, many people out there who are angry, hostile, and petty enough to put you out of work if they take a mind to. We can explore what makes them tick another time, but suffice it to say that there’s more than enough ugliness out there to make you realize that even if you’re not at war with them, they’re at war with you. Act accordingly.

Me: What are you doing differently RE: online behavior now, versus before this foofaraw?

Huffman: From now on, the little I tweet will be strictly related to art and writing projects, which was the intended purpose of my having a Twitter account in the first place. My political efforts will be focused on local and state politics, where real battles can be won; Twitter victories are meaningless, but an online horde of angry liberals upset because you told them that sex can make babies can cause real-life damage. It just isn’t worth it.

A mature person learns from his own experience. A smart person learns from someone else’s experience. Despite my deeply-held opinions about politics, the culture war, and similar subjects, I’m finding that expressing these opinions on social media contributes more to noise than signal. I just don’t have anything original to say on these topics; at least, not that can be communicated in 280 characters or less. Combined with the knowledge that the internet is filled with undiagnosed psychopaths who are perfectly happy to destroy your life simply because you express an opinion that differs from theirs, and it makes using social media to say anything except for the blandest of things a fool’s game. The heckler’s veto works. Their endgame is to silence all opinion different from their own.

Let the psychopaths have Twitter. They own it, they run it, they populate it.

For the Appalling Stories series, entertainment is paramount. Yes, we intend to push back against left-wing agitprop infesting genre fiction, but if it’s a boring story, or, worse yet, right-wing agitprop masquerading as genre fiction, it wouldn’t fit. For my story Deprogram in Appalling Stories 2, I wanted to extend the craziness of multiple genders and the criminalizing of traditional morals to the next level, positing a future that hinted of Dystopia without bludgeoning the reader with details. Here’s an excerpt:

—

After a final glance at the security monitor, Grayson got up from his desk, left his office, and waited in the reception area for his new clients. They hadn’t signed the contract, but he knew with perfect certitude that by the end of the meeting they would leave his office scared, hopeful, and lighter by $250,000. They always did.

Smoothing his necktie, Grayson played his favorite pre-meeting game: which spouse would open the door first? Definitely Evelyn. Pat was still transitioning, and the male-to-female types tended to go overboard with the wilting flower routine until they worked out the hormonal quirks and relational friction. If he was wrong, he’d do leg day twice this week. If he was right, he’d treat himself to an extra shot of—

The door opened and Evelyn walked in, followed by her wife. Both medium-sized, average-looking types; the security monitor’s shitty resolution hadn’t picked up the lipstick on Pat’s teeth or Evelyn’s puffy eyes.

“Good morning,” Grayson said with a relieved smile, keeping his hands where they could see them. “I checked each of your ProReg profiles ten minutes ago. I take it you both still prefer to be referred to as Ms. for the purposes of this meeting? I apologize if I’ve made an offensive assumption.”

“Ms. Papasian-Smith,” Pat said. She clutched her Nouveau Spade purse in a tight grip, but he noticed that her right hand twitched on meeting him: suppressing the handshake habit she’d acquired in decades of being—no, living as a man.

Keeping his expression bland, Grayson bobbed his head. “A pleasure. Please, call me Grayson or Mr. Dahab. Or even ‘hey, you’; whatever suits.” He didn’t wait to see their reaction to the weak joke as he led the way to his office. “Please have a seat. Would either of you like coffee or water?”

Nodding at their demurrals, he seated himself behind the desk and steepled his fingers. “We need to get something out of the way: there won’t be any monitors or recordings during this meeting, due to the…sensitive nature of what we’re about to discuss. With that in mind, I understand that you’re putting yourselves in some danger by consenting to being alone with me. I was born and continue to identify as male and cis, as you’ve no doubt seen from my ProReg profile. If that makes you feel unsafe, we can stop the meeting right now and you’re free to leave with no hard feelings. Is that all right?”

Evelyn looked at Pat, who made a show of thinking about it before nodding. “Yes. That’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Grayson said, folding his hands. “I got the broa—er, the less-detailed story in your email. Can you tell me a little more so we can decide what our next steps might be?”

As Evelyn opened her mouth to speak, Pat leaned forward and barked, “What’s your success rate? How can we be sure we’ll…I mean, our daughter, she…” Her mouth pursed into a glistening red asshole shape, and as she reached into her purse for a Kleenex, sobbing, Evelyn grimaced and patted at her shoulder.

Grayson turned, opened the mini-fridge, and pulled out a bottle of water, which he placed on the desk within both women’s reach. “I understand how difficult this can be,” he said, once Pat’s storm of crying had blown over. “However, I should probably warn you that what you—what we’re dealing with is extremely dangerous. These terrorists…these…cultists, they’ve mastered the art of brainwashing. I can’t deprogram someone with a snap of my fingers. It’s a long and difficult process, and at the end, sometimes I don’t succeed.”

Evelyn’s head snapped up. “What happens then?”

“I call the police, who’ll take her away.”

“Oh, Gaia,” Pat sobbed, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

Blinking, Evelyn said, “But we wouldn’t tell—“

“I can’t take that chance,” Grayson said, lifting his hand. “If your daughter’s really caught up in this, and from what you told me in the email I’m sure she is, then she’s joined an organization that bombs hospitals, shoots schools, and burns down shopping malls. The WLA makes the freedom fighter 9/11 terrorists look like Outdoor Scouts selling cookies. We could all be sent away for the rest of our lives if we’re caught aiding and abetting even one of these WLA types. Or worse.” He tapped his index finger against his forehead.

Evelyn covered her mouth and looked away.

Voice soft, he added, “But Ms. Papasian-Smith asked a good question. My deprogramming success rate. It currently stands at ninety percent. Nine out of every ten kids. That’s good odds. And I can guarantee that there’s nothing I won’t do to save your daughter from these monsters.”

Glancing at her wife, who shredded a damp tissue and stared into her lap, Evelyn said, “Okay. What do you need to know?”

“There are those who believe that life here began out there: far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive…somewhere beyond the heavens.”

I was only in single digits when it was first broadcast, but I’ll never forget watching the original Battlestar Galactica television series. Most science fiction programs like Star Trek, The Invaders, and even My Favorite Martian were relegated to UHF back then. A high-budget network television show with dogfighting spaceships, scary robots, and aliens was special. Even the comic books were cool. We all wanted to be like Starbuck or Apollo. Adama was the wise grandfather we wish we had. And who didn’t want to pilot a Colonial Viper?

As I watch it today, Battlestar Galactica‘s flaws become more evident. It could be that it’s a different viewing experience when you’re not seated six inches from a wood-framed color TV, wide-eyed and absorbing uncounted roentgens of radiation. Or maybe it’s got real problems. Nevertheless, it’s still an entertaining program, and worth talking about. We can discuss the 2003 remake at a later time. I’ve got all the DVDs.

The most striking thing about the show when you first watch it is the music. Both sad and stirring, it fits perfectly within the theme of embattled humanity fleeing for its life across the blackness of space. It conveys both loss and dignity, grief and unbowed heads.

Casting and performances were uneven, but hit the mark where it counted. Lorne Greene inhabited Adama, and to those of us who never watched Greene in Bonanza (why would you when Star Trek reruns were on), he nevertheless became a favorite actor. A great leader of men. His rich, deep voice conveyed both wisdom and authority, and he was very rarely wrong about anything. You’d follow Adama to the end of the universe if he asked, and would be honored by the request every centon. Dirk Benedict as Starbuck was the perfect lovable rogue: smoked cigars, drank, played cards, joked, womanized, feared commitment but possessed fierce loyalty, always with an eye for the main chance. You rooted for him, or for Richard Hatch as Apollo, the strait-laced fighter pilot who always did the right thing, and did it by the book. The other characters were, for the most part, interchangeable except for Herbert Jefferson Jr as Boomer and John Colicos as the evil Count Baltar. No one else stood out.

The child character Boxey was a problem. His pet robot dog Muffit was a problem. Even as a small boy I hated them. Perhaps I was born a cynic, but back then I knew they’d only been put into the show to cater to young people like me. Perhaps if Muffit wasn’t so obviously a performer in a robot dog suit or if Boxey hadn’t been so irritating they might have been better received. As it was, they were an unwelcome distraction that took you out of the show.

There’s a fundamental decency to the characters, themes, and storytelling that’s completely absent from today’s television fare. The people of the 12 Colonies believed in God. They prayed to Him, these ancient, starfaring people who had a different Bible, a different set of legends and heroes. They had marriage and codes of honor and were appalled at the necessity, when all else failed, of putting their women on the front lines of combat in Colonial Vipers. The miniseries’s pilot, Saga of a Star World, reflects late 1970’s Cold War concerns, with the Cylons filling in for the Soviets as a dreadful, implacable enemy. This Cold War comparison becomes even more stark when Sire Uri, a leader among the surviving humans, suggests that they should dispose of all of their weapons to show the Cylons that humans are no longer a threat. The Cylons would presumably call off the war and sue for peace: a perfect metaphor for the demand for nuclear disarmament in the face of Soviet aggression. We know how that ended up in the real world, and the people of Battlestar Galactica were at least as wise as us in refusing Sire Uri’s suggestion.

The special effects were good for the time. A common complaint was the frequent reuse of certain special effects shots: dogfights, ships exploding, Vipers leaving the flight bay, etc. I already mentioned the unfortunate Muffit. Still, they don’t get in the way of the plot. The Cylons were creepy, with their absurdly shiny bodies and that red, endlessly scanning eye. Despite the uniformity of their electronic voices, they’re not emotionless robots: they experience anger, concern, and fear. Some even carry swords. There’s a Cylon culture buried somewhere deep in their reptilian past, but we don’t see much of it. Lucifer, Count Baltar’s erstwhile dogsbody, has a disquietingly effete, refined voice, but his sparkling robot head is too small for his body and he’s difficult to be afraid of. All in all, Battlestar Galactica‘s illusion is imperfect, but functional.

Unfortunately, the show had problems throughout its run, with high budgets, terrible mid-season episodes, and dwindling viewership. It didn’t last past a single season. Galactica 1980 failed to recapture the magic and didn’t last long, either.

Nevertheless, it still holds up. If barely.

“Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, the Galactica, leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest: a shining planet known as Earth.”

Some of my writer friends tell me that writing is agony. Dragging words onto the page can be like pulling teeth. I agree…sometimes. At other times the words just pour out. I wish it were the latter all the time, and I envy those who seem to be able to turn on the spigot at will. More often than not, however, writing hurts.

Reading can hurt, too.

Sunday, January 27 was Holocaust Remembrance Day. I wanted to commemorate it in some fashion, so I purchased Elie Wiesel’s Night, which I’ve always wanted to read. It’s his account of surviving the Nazi death camps at Auchwitz and Buchenwald. It’s beautifully written. It’s a nightmare. It’s everything you dreaded and feared about such an experience, multiplied a thousandfold. Wiesel’s account finds new ways to stick a knife into you on every page, from banal cruelties to horrific betrayals. You can survive such experiences, you can come out the other side and find (some of) your loved ones, you can rejoice in their deliverance, and you can still carry the dreadful, soul-scarring burden of what happened until the end of your days. Despite the anguish, it’s necessary reading.

News about New York’s new abortion law has been at the forefront of late. Virginia has decided to go one further and is discussing post-birth abortions. Infanticide. As unbelievably disgusting as this is, abortion in America is not the Holocaust, and comparisons to the Holocaust will not only fall short, but serve to minimize the horrors that the Germans inflicted on the Jewish people (and to themselves; the crime will always stain them). I’m not sure if the pro-life movement simply lacks the vocabulary to separate the two things or is simply looking to scrape some of the sickening cachet off the Holocaust to bring home the notion that abortion is horrible, but it’s a foolish, uninformed, alienating comparison. Nobody who’s read Night would make that comparison without knowing, deep down, how false it is. The world has enough unique, appalling crimes to choose from without lumping them together for convenience’s sake. I believe life begins at the moment of conception. And abortion is not the Holocaust.

—

Reading Andrew Breitbart’s Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World was another painful experience, but for different reasons. I never met Andrew, but I became a big fan of his work in the early days of Big Hollywood. I’ll never forget the day I learned he died: it was early morning in our house in Colorado, and I was feeding my baby son his bottle when the phone rang. My wife. She’d just left for work. Probably forgot something. I answered the call, and she told me that she’d just heard on the radio that Andrew Breitbart died. It was a kick in the gut. The right, which had only just started to get wise to the fact that the Culture War was for keeps, had just lost its most fearless warrior.

That’s what makes Righteous Indignation such a difficult read, even eight years after it was published. Despite everyone’s best efforts, which are often very good, his departure is still keenly felt. He had a clarity and courage that you couldn’t help but admire, and to read about what he’d planned to do after the book was published is terribly sad. He died young, with a wife and small children, and it’s a great loss. The media treatment of the Tea Party back then is the same as the media treatment of Trump voters, except that the media hates Trump voters even more than they hated the Tea Party. The cycle repeats.

The book itself is an amazing primer on media malpractice in the age of the internet, and goes through not just the history of progressivism as it’s practiced in America, but Andrew’s personal history. How he jumped into the Culture War, and why. Fascinating stuff, even years after its publication.

For a real treat (heh), take a look at the acknowledgments at the back of the book. Andrew was friends with everybody. Now the right’s become irrevocably fractured. Establishment vs. Culture Warriors. The Establishment humored the Tea Party because they knew it was, essentially, not a danger to their power structure. Despite a few Establishment pols getting primaried (and losing), their sinecures, think tanks, and publications were safe. Trump’s election changed that. It showed us that the Establishment lives for one thing: maintaining its status. Now that this status is threatened, these Trumpists have to go. Hence the fracture.

I hold no illusions that what I write here will be read by the Covington High School students mired in the latest case of social media-fueled media malpractice. It’s really a message to my son, who will have to learn these lessons eventually; the sooner he takes them to heart, the better off he’ll be.

Hey guys:

I’m not going to pretend that I understand what you’re dealing with now. I’m assuming, however, that if you were attending the March for Life to protest the horror of abortion, you’ve got good parents who are guiding you along the path to being decent adults. At your age I didn’t care about any issues outside of my personal desires, so I salute you.

Obviously the attendant ugliness isn’t what you expected. It’s bad that it happened, but it’s worse if you don’t learn anything from it. Here are the biggest takeaways:

Adults lie. You probably knew this already, but it’s particularly galling when thousands of adults are lying about you, what you’ve done, what you’ve seen, and what you believe. There’s a big difference between white lies and lies designed to destroy you, and you’re being subjected to the latter, and it sucks. It’s disillusioning. Nathan Phillips lied to the media about what he did to you and what you did. He has a history of lying about his service record and previous encounters with white people. You’re being lied about by politicians, news reporters, entertainers and their brain-dead fans, and it’s absolutely crazy, but here we are. They’re lying about you not because of anything you’ve done personally to them, but because of what you represent: the millions and millions of people who hold different values. You’ve become proxies for President Trump, his voters, and anyone who stands against abortion. They hate you (and us) so much they’ll lie about you to ruin your lives. So yes, adults lie.

Only your family has your back. It’s absolutely shameful that the diocese and school immediately and publicly rushed to judgment against you, despite that these are some of the adults who know you best. Any apology at this point is too little, too late: the damage has already been done. Their primary interest isn’t in protecting or even educating you: they live first and foremost to maintain their jobs. Students come and go, parishioners move elsewhere, but the school and the church live on. They don’t have your back. Not even the strangers who are outraged on your behalf have your back, at least not for long; we’ll move on to a different outrage next week. Only your family has your back. Don’t trust your teachers or clergy to protect you. Trust your parents. Trust your family. They’re the ones who will see you through this.

Entertainers are, for the most part, scum. I understand the desire to lionize actors, musicians, and comedians. They entertain us and it’s natural to like them for it. It’s hard to dislike someone who makes you laugh. Just remember that they’re doing a job, nothing more. They have no special skills outside of that job. They don’t have the wisdom of the brilliant people they sometimes portray, and for the most part, they lack curiosity, education, and ethics. Hollywood is a town that’s known worldwide for rampant sexual assault, pedophilia, substance abuse, and institutionalized prostitution. So when you see something like this:

Consider the source. John DiMaggio is the actor who does the voice for Jake the dog in Adventure Time. And now he’s hoping you’ll die. He doesn’t even know you. He hasn’t bothered to inform himself as to the particulars of the incident. He’s representative of the majority of the entertainment sphere. So don’t make the mistake of elevating entertainers. They’re not good people just because they’re on screen. In fact, most of them aren’t good people at all. Don’t you have something better to do than give the people who hate you your time and money and attention?

Most adults are cowards. While you’ll find a lot of air time devoted to attacking you for just being there and wearing MAGA hats, you won’t find a lot of air time devoted to attacking the Black Hebrew Israelites. Which is weird, because they called you “faggots”. If white nationalists had called black kids faggots, you can be sure that every gay rights organization on the planet would have jumped on them with both feet. But they haven’t, because the Black Hebrew Israelites scare them. Because they’re cowards. Anyone in media who doesn’t denounce this racist, bigoted group the Black Hebrew Israelites is either a coward or someone who agrees with them. Note also that the majority of people who called for you to be beaten up or even murdered weren’t saying they’d do it themselves. They asked other people to do it, because they’re cowards. Like Reza Aslan.

This is all very cynical, I know, but it’s also the truth, and it’s something you’re living right now. I wish you the best of success in everything, particularly your lawsuit.

For Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Stories of Social Injustice, the book’s subtitle preceded the content. I chose to interpret it this way: my contributions needed to be more appalling in this second volume. I wanted to push the envelope without devolving into a tiresome description of disgusting circumstances, which is typical in so-called “extreme horror” stories. Appalling Stories 2 isn’t extreme horror, though many of the events described therein are pretty horrible.

People like to ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” I never know how to answer this question. Even my dental hygienist asked me once. I replied, “In the dentist chair,” which elicited the hoped-for laugh. A novel has to have more than one idea. You can get away with just one in a short story.

For the story Her Bodies, Her Choice, I didn’t come up with the idea myself. Rick Canton, a friend of mine who I used to work with on the website The Loftus Party provided the central concept. On Twitter he asked a prominent feminist, “Why’re you so excited for abortion? Do you eat aborted babies or something?” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the idea. He’s since been kicked off of Twitter for similar offenses. But his question planted the seed: feminists eating fetuses. Disgusting. Horrifying. Compelling. But I had to flesh it out. It had to make sense, it had to entertain, and it had to fit within the theme of the Appalling Stories anthology. The story I eventually came up with takes this idea and runs with it, turning it into a dreadful, far-reaching conspiracy. It even includes a description of a photo I saw in a book on witchcraft decades ago: a woman’s skeleton, freshly disinterred, with huge, heavy screws at her knees and elbows. They’d screwed her bones together to keep her from rising from the grave. That’s how much they feared her, even in death.

My other story, The Deprogram, came as a result of watching the 1982 movie Split Image, starring James Woods and Brian Dennehy. In it, a young man enters a Bhagwan-style cult and his desperate parents try to get him out. The same author who gave me the idea for the Bake Me a Cake story in the first Appalling Stories anthology suggested I watch it, though I can’t remember the context. The movie wasn’t bad, everyone played to type, and it provided fertile ground for a story: in a social justice future, people would have to be brainwashed to accept ludicrous notions like gender being a social construct instead of a biological fact of nature. Political correctness not just run amok, but extended into its necessarily oppressive and unpleasant future, where certain ideas are criminalized and rebelling against the accepted mode of thinking is punishable by government-issued lobotomy. But it had to be realistic. Like the previous story, it had to make sense and fit the theme.

You, the reader, will have to decide if either story was appalling enough, or even more appalling than the previous volume. And I’m not talking about the writing.